Play Pretend
by goldnox
Summary: ONE-SHOT / Four months of death. Three of life. And none of it means a thing. Not when Damon comes back to find that Elena blinked their history out of existence, banishing him to watch from the sidelines as she lives her life with someone other than him. But what kind of life does that leave for Damon? Is there any way to numb the pain? / Based on episode 6x06 promo / DARK


**A/N: Hey there! So I have been firmly ensconced in the AU/AH universe for a while now, but God bless my husband because after watching last week's episode and next week's promo (6X06) he came up with an idea that was (I think) beyond brilliant. All coincided with a song that I'm obsessed with and got him obsessed with and I totally want you all to listen to. That's right, guys. Y'all are such a part of our life that Mr. Goldnox ran up to me, all excited and rapidly talking about how much you guys would probably love an angsty one shot right now and what if we did it like this and focused on that and less than 24 hours later, here we are :) **

**I do want to say one little thing here about heroes. Because my beta, Trogdor19, is mine. She works crazy hours and lives in remote places so she can try to save endangered species, and that reduces her access to cell service and internet by endless degrees. She drives miles upon miles to access the wondrous internet so she can download chapters and upload beta comments on my stories, and there is no way I can ever thank her enough for that. **

**It does, however, keep her from watching the TVD episodes because all her data plan is unfortunately used up in my never-ending stream of babbly emails. Translation? She hasn't seen a minute of season six, and thus, I felt it would be unfair to spoil her by asking her to beta this one shot. What you're getting is raw me, errors and clumsy wording and all. I have to admit, it is TERRIFYING to post anything that is unbeta'd, so be kind please :) **

**Other than that, I hope you enjoy, angsty as this is. Oh, and we're rated M, as is MOTHERFUCKER WHY DID I READ SOMETHING SO DAMN DEPRESSING?**

**Um, because I'm a sadist? Feel free to blame my husband for what follows :)**

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><p><em>Tove Lo: Habits (Stay High) - [Hippie Sabotage Remix]<em>

_Staying in my play pretend  
>Where the fun ain't got no end<br>Staying in my play pretend  
>Where the fun ain't got no end<br>Staying in my play pretend  
>Where the fun ain't got no end<em>

_Can't go home alone again_  
><em>Need someone to numb the pain<em>  
><em>Can't go home alone again<em>  
><em>Need someone to numb the pain<em>  
><em>Can't go home alone again<em>  
><em>Need someone to numb the pain<em>

_Staying in my play pretend_  
><em>Where the fun ain't got no end<em>  
><em>Can't go home alone again<em>  
><em>Need someone to numb the pain<em>

_You're gone and I got to stay high_  
><em>All the time<em>  
><em>High...all the time<em>  
><em>High…all the time<em>  
><em>To keep you off my mind<em>  
><em>High…all the time<em>  
><em>High…all the time<em>  
><em>High…all the time<em>  
><em>To keep you off my mind<em>

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><p><strong>Play Pretend<strong>

Small hands slide up my chest, her hips rocking against mine to the beat of the music pounding through the club and when she tilts her chin up, mouth open expectantly, I smile.

The bottle in my right hand is halfway empty and about to be more so, but it's worth it when I tip some into my own mouth, then rain the whiskey down into hers. She swallows before she laughs, never stopping in her movements as she straddles my thigh and rubs against me to the latest one-hit-wonder the DJ is determined to put his own spin on. She pulls one hand from my shoulder to wipe at her mouth, lip gloss smearing but it doesn't really matter. Nothing matters except that the world is strobe lights and smoke, curled hair and cell phones taking selfies so they'll remember in the morning where they were the night before.

My hand on her lower back slips over sweaty silk and the rough denim of too-tight jeans, and she sucks in a shocked gasp that I tauntingly return when I cup her ass and bring her in closer. Behind her two women are making out to the cheering audience of their group, my eyes not the only ones wandering over the path of their painted fingernails as they stroke each other's cheeks and tangle in long, wavy hair, glossy lips open as their tongues meet somewhere in between. The lights of cellphone cameras brighten the display as their friends record them, guys exchanging smirks and then passing them shot glasses when the women separate with shocked laughs.

The girl I'm dancing with turns to get a peek at the commotion when the club hollers their praise and desire for an encore, and she chuckles and offers an outstretched fist-bump to one of the exhibitionists before she turns back to me. Her head falls away as her back arches, hips dropping dangerously and hardened nipples stroking my chest. And I'm drowning in the raw pull of thundering blood that is sure to be laced with outlawed substances when someone to my right leans in, then blows a long string of smoke over her extended neck. I chuckle and steal it back off her skin, inhaling deeply and holding it in my lungs until the name of the high sinks in, then I blow it back out through the swaying hands of the crowd and I _missed_ this.

_Fun._

I had forgotten what it was like to be free to be _me_, but some things, some habits, never fade and it's not hard to fall back into the lifestyle. To spend your days asleep so you can play at night, drinking your regrets away and making new ones between the thighs of pretty little things who don't know what I can do to them. But they don't care either.

All they need is someone brave enough to touch them in a crowd, to breathe into their lips the ways I'll make them scream. Dance with them and feel the primal comfort of hard nudging soft until it segues into a thrown-back shot glass followed by a joint and a cigarette, a bump of coke in the bathroom before the hinges on the door are tested against the strength of my thrusts. And my hands will know their bodies, but their names never touch my tongue. They have no names.

I bend my mouth to her neck as she arches farther back, my tongue flirting with the vein that is calling my teeth to sharpen, and she shivers under a throaty moan. A balloon pops somewhere close by and someone screams in shock, a ripple of laughter right behind it, and then it's a chorus of cheers when the song shifts and the energy of the place ignites. Red-painted fingernails comb through my hair and stroke my scalp with a pressure that isn't nearly as wild as I'd prefer, her pulse spiking when I push closer, teasing her with what I'm desperate to sink into silk. And when she straightens, her breath mixing with mine, I grin and bring the bottle up between us, and I drink.

Her eyes are half-lidded as she watches every movement of my lips wrapping around the spout, the long fall and surge of my Adam's apple when I swallow, the flex of my jaw when I'm finished and gulp heady air. Hooking one arm tighter around my neck, she reaches for the whiskey and I playfully pull it away. Another laugh bursts out of her, high on adrenaline and the promise of sex, and with a movement so smooth it whispers of the supernatural, she turns away and takes me with her.

Her slender fingers lace through mine as she leads us through the crowd, her hips swaying to the music and hands grazing random bodies on our way past until the throng thins at a door smeared with glowing marker and drunkenly-crafted graffiti. It swings open to the smell of mistakes and the ugly reality of having one-too-many, two other girls rushing past us on their way back out and my nostrils burn under the lingering of grocery store cosmetics and a sampling of every shelf filling the local Bath and Bodyworks. But the nauseating aroma is quickly overtaken by a line of cocaine as it leaps off her hand-mirror and through the rolled dollar bill, surging through my nose and into my bloodstream and painting everything a little brighter than before.

I blink and shake my head, letting the high rush in and make my world fast and sharp and strong. So fucking _strong_.

She finishes her line and then leans back against the sink, smiling as she pools a mound of coke on the dip between her breasts. My eyes flare as my mouth perks up, and when I step into her, she hooks a leg around my waist and moans when I duck my head, my tongue taking its time as it lifts it off her skin. I straighten and then chug down more whiskey as she returns to the white powder still on her mirror, her leg dropping back down to the floor but it won't be long now. She snorts the line fast, her eyes popping open as her pupils dilate and in the harsh lighting of the bathroom, she's not nearly as tempting as she was before. Her hair is a day past dirty and her cheeks are sunken, lines at the edges of her eyes that speak of past tears cried and I don't give a shit about them. It's all in the past anyway.

And the pathetic reminder is just as easy to crawl into as it is to forget, because she puts the mirror and the dollar bill away and when she smiles at me, it is with the acceptance that life is better now than it was before. Sure. Her hand fists into the front of my shirt and pulls, and we stumble back into the stall, laughing when I kick the door shut behind us and it blows the hinges, continuing out the wrong way. But she doesn't seem to care about exposure caused by collateral damage since while I'm busy bracing one hand on the tilting wall and my other is lifting the bottle back to my mouth, she unbuckles my belt. I snort as she wastes no time unhooking my jeans, my cock pushing down the zipper for her while she turns and hikes up her skirt, then coyly peeks over her shoulder with a practiced toss of her hair. Another smile, rubbing her thong-laced ass against me, and I let the wall go to grip her neck and bend her over, then pull her panties aside and slam into her without mercy.

She cries out, hands clutching at Sharpie covered tile as I stroke into her hard and fast, and she's soaking wet and hot as southern summers and it's nothing to close my eyes and just _feel_ her. The slap of foreign skin and the smell of sex and a voice screaming in pleasure that I didn't know before ten minutes ago.

And as I lose myself in the act that is one of the only things that keeps me going, my drug-fueled mind betrays me, stuttering over a name that threatens to wreck me. But I'm safe when I hear the bathroom door open, loud music trailing behind giggles and debates of whether to go home with the guy whoever was just dancing with, then shocked gasps as I apparently hit a spot that makes the scratchy voice of the girl I'm fucking into oblivion burst out in a plea for more.

My fingers are brutal on her hip as I thrust deeper, fading into the tight clamp that tells me she's already coming, the rush of silky heat that is next to paint my cock confirming it. The door shuts behind a taunt and I shift my hand back to her neck and push her down farther. And with another's face flashing behind my eyes, I drive relentlessly until white-hot sensation pumps out of me and makes my skin light on fire with a stolen intensity that doesn't belong to the girl I just gave it to.

I take a breath and a deep pull of whiskey once I'm done, and she squirms with her body bent vulnerably over and me still inside of her. I pull out and tuck myself back into my jeans, but the sound of my zipper is stark against the silence that followed her moans and I can barely swallow. My throat locks shut as she turns around, her cheeks flushed and eyes alight with pleasure while she shimmies her skirt back into place. She runs a hand through her hair, eyes still following my lips as I smirk and make myself drink some more, but the haze from the booze and the drugs never lasts long enough these days.

She holds her hand out for the bottle and I pass it to her, and while she closes her eyes and greedily drinks, I tilt my head, cataloguing the pace of her pulse, and then I strike.

My teeth slice through her skin and pierce the vein in her neck, my palm squeezing her vocal pipe shut as I pin her to the wall and begin to suck and swallow. She pushes and kicks and it only pumps her blood more ferociously over my tongue, my body thrumming with her life while her strength melts away, subduing to the fight she never had a chance of winning. And a voice inside my head tells me I should stop, that she doesn't deserve to die and to be the better man and that it isn't fair.

Fuck fair.

It's not fair that I can't stand to make them forget me, not anymore. I can't look in their eyes and replace their memories of the uncomfortable truth with pretty little pictures that will make them more at ease. The truth is that this is me, I am the same man I've always been, and I am unapologetically ruthless. I like killing, I love blood, and the biggest secret I've ever kept was shared to just one person and she had it wiped from her memory. Just like that.

One blink between truth and lies, and it's probably for the best but it doesn't mean that I'm suddenly okay with the fact that I came back to a reality that no longer exists.

I came back to _this_.

Endless bloodlust and sexual frustration that will never be sated, and no way to numb the pain except through the parted legs and open veins of intoxicated women whose blood delivers twice the high, but it's never enough of what I need. I wake up to blurry hotel rooms, bodies of women I fucked and drained sprawled over sheets and on the floor. My phone rings with a long list of name-laden numbers, but talking to them won't fix anything so I don't answer. I nudge the broken casualties aside so I can shower off the previous night, and then I leave. I stumble as I drink anything I can get my hands on, snorting and shooting whatever came out of their purses and off their bodies once they were dead, and I go where I always go.

I watch her walk with him, hand in hand as they steal kisses and touches and laugh about classes and parties. I stand outside her door, my palm resting against the wood while I listen to her life as nothing more than an unwelcome outsider because she chose to forget, and when I came back, she refused to remember.

And when it becomes too much, when my hand on her door becomes a fist in the wall beside it, I go back to dark clubs where the lights flash just bright enough to hide the faces but reveal feminine curves. I tumble into bathrooms and hotel beds and laugh with lips painted the wrong color, breathe scents and taste skin and drink blood and fuck until I can't anymore and I _feel_.

I have to feel, to know that I'm alive. Because every moment that I don't, I'm still in hell.

I rip my teeth free from the neck of the girl barely clinging to life in front of me, her eyes wide in horror as she recognizes me for what I am, for what everyone has never hesitated to believe me to be. What _she_ believes me to be because the memories she chose to keep are the ones I wish most she'd forget.

Blood drips from my receding fangs and down onto my shirt, my eyes prickling as black veins flash and then disappear under my skin where they continually lay in wait, and when she opens her mouth to scream, I snap her neck.

One sharp twist, her hair whipping with the movement so it glides over the bridge of my nose and tangles in my eyebrows, and my hand snakes out to catch the bottle before her lifeless fingers release it and sends it crashing to the floor. Her body slumps awkwardly against the wall, and after I take a long drink I shake my head to revel in the buzz from sex and blood and drugs that is thankfully still vibrating though me.

I search her pockets and find the rest of her stash of cocaine, along with a surprise of ecstasy and a tab of acid, devouring it all with a predatory need. A lazy grin pulls at the corner of my mouth when life becomes a little less clear, memories a little more blurry and existence a lot more tolerable. It's a quick stop at the sink to wipe off the blood from my mouth, straighten my collar and stare my reflection down and tell myself to suck it up, then I pull open the bathroom door and stride back into the crowd.

The night air is thick with smoke and questions of cab rides or opting for alleys, hands reaching high to the lights as heads and bodies sway with the shapelessness of lost-inhibitions. I let the drifting caresses of welcoming fingertips and hungry eyes embrace me when I slide past, and four smooth steps in and three swallows of declining-whiskey-rations later, two small hands glide around my waist and up my chest, draping around my neck.

Her head falls back under the rhythm of the music and my hand settles on her lower back, learning the feeling of her pulse and decoding this new mixture of scents. And as my zipper nudges hers and my knee slides between her own, I lift the bottle back to my mouth, and I pretend to smile.

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><p><em>fin<em>

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><p><strong>AN: Okay my darlings, GROUP HUG! I sincerely hope all works out a hell of a lot better for our fave couple in the actual show, but I'm an angst whore and never have more fun than when I have characters make (in the words of my son) "sad choices." Hope you enjoyed this very short dip back into canon, and if you liked this then feel free to peruse my other stuff, ranging from the light and fluffy of With Eyes Wide Open to more steamy one shots like Let It Rain and By Any Other Name, some stories a little more brutal than others such as Defining Desperation. If long tales are your thing and AU/AH doesn't make you gag, take a peek at my two complete books (Auto In and Order Up) and the one that's currently in progress, Swap Out. We got a little something for everybody 'round here.**

**Oh, and it should go without saying, but I don't condone illicit drug use as a solution to dealing with problems. Yep, that's about it.**

**Stay safe and be kind to one another, and I love you all and hope to see you around!**

**-Goldnox**


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